1950). of a Hero, dedicated to the so-called lost generation , is Aldington s first and most important novel. Containing a passionate protest against both war and the rotten order of things in his own country, it displays English intellectual and social life before and during World War I.book opens with a prologue about George Winterbourne s death.
George was killed soon after dawn on the 4th November, 1918, at a place called Maison Blanche. ... He was the only officer in his battalion killed in that action, for the Germans surrendered or ran away in less than an hour ... The whole of his company were lying down waiting for the flying trench-mortar squad to deal with the machine-gun, when for some unexplained reason George had stood up and a dozen bullets had gone through him. Silly ass , was the Colonel s comment .... author describes how Winterbourne s relatives receive the news from the War Office which runs - regret to inform. .. killed in action ... Their Majesty s sympathy ... The telegram went to the home address in the country, and was opened by Mrs. Winrebourne. Such an excitement for her, almost a pleasant change, for it was pretty dull in the country just after the Armistice. She was sitting by the fire, yawning over her twenty-second lover ... Mrs. Winterbourne liked drama in private life. She uttered a most creditable shriek, clasped both hands to her rather soggy bosom, and pretended to faint. ... But the effect of George s death on her temperament was, strangely enough, almost wholly erotic. get acquainted with the main characters of the book: George Winterbourne s parents, his wife Elizabeth, his mistress Fanny and George s friend who is the bearer of Aldington s views and comments as well. Elizabeth and Fanny were not grotesques. They adjusted to the war with marvelous precision and speed, just as they afterwards adapted themselves to the postwar. At the fatal news Mr . Winterbourne had fallen upon his knees (not forgetting, however, to ring off the harpy) . the very beginning Aldington exposes the moral standards of bourgeois society. The first part of the book opens, after the break of the news about George s death, with characteristics of Victorian England about the year 1890. The author tells about George s parents, a petty bourgeois family and a very different England, that of 1890, and yet curiously the same. An England morally buried in great foggy mappings of hypocrisy and prosperity and cheapness. The working class beginning to heave restively, but still moody, still under the Golden Rule of Ever remember, my dear Bert, you may one day be manager of that concern . the second part the narrator tells us through many flashbacks about George Winterbourne s life. The author dwells on family relations, love, modern art and criticizes mercilessly modern capitalist society and civilization.third part of the novel is entirely devoted to George s Active Service on the Continent - mainly in France. Here Aldington gives a truthful picture of World War I. He does not describe much the trenches and soldiers in the war. Nevertheless we see the senselessness of the war and fully agree with the author that millions of people are killed for nothing. George suffers at the feeling that his body has become worthless, condemned to a sort of kept tramp s standard of living and ruthlessly treated as cannon-fodder. He suffers for other men too, that they should be condemned to this; but since it was common fate of the men of his generation he determines he must endure it.at the beginning of the book we learn about George s death as told by his commander, a colonel, so at the end of the book we get to know about the last minutes of George Winterbourne s life. title of the book Death of a Hero is ironical. There was nothing heroic in George Winterbourne s death, it was quite useless and senseless. I think that George committed suicide in...
